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Category Archives: Economics

You may have heard it here first

Friday, September 12, 2008

While perusing today’s Times, I came across this article (Investors Turn Gaze to A.I.G.), in which we hear the first rumblings about what will no doubt be the next Lehman Brothers: American International Group. This is yet another financial services company that is hemorrhaging money, partly because it was systematically looted by its management, who […]

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Market forces

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Recently I was having a conversation with a friend. Actually, it wasn’t a conversation, it was more like we were taking turns ranting. It will come as no surprise that we were talking politics. During the course of the conversation one of us mentioned the Republican mantra that the market will take care of all […]

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Economic Progress, McCain style

Friday, August 29, 2008

Hilariously funny. Don’t give up, the good part’s toward the end.

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Good riddance, but what symbolism

Monday, August 4, 2008

From the Moscow Times: U.S. auto giant General Motors is negotiating with Russian automakers on a possible sale of the Hummer brand, Vedomosti reported Monday. Among potential Russian buyers are Oleg Deripaska’s Russian Machines, Vadim Shvetsov’s Sollers and Kaliningrad-based automaker Avtotor, the newspaper said. GM already has a Hummer assembly plant in Kaliningrad. GM is […]

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High finance

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Merrill Lynch just dumped some of its more toxic assets for what looks like a purchase price of 6.7 billion, already a steep discount from their nominal value: Merrill sold the investments at a steep loss. The United States super senior asset backed-security C.D.O.’s that Merrill sold were once valued at $30.6 billion. As of […]

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Ben Stein: Everything’s still fine, just like he told us last year

Sunday, July 27, 2008

I must admit that Ben Stein is one of those Republicans who really gets under my skin. Perhaps it’s because he’s put himself forward as a poylmath, and operates on an idiot level on so many fronts. He writes on economics for the New York Times, though his credentials for doing so are something of […]

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How far a fall

Thursday, July 17, 2008

The day that I started work at my law firm we inherited a case involving the New Haven Register. Since I had just started, and had nothing else to do, I carried a briefcase for the senior partner working on the case, on which we made a lot of money. At that time, the Register […]

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Guest Post

Monday, June 2, 2008

An old friend, Bob Roth (who, along with his wife Judy accounted for half the guests at my wedding) sent me an article that he wrote called The Third Worldization of the United States Is In Process and Well Along . Bob lives in Eugene, Oregon. He’s been interested in globalization issues for a long […]

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Another fraud from Merrill and more hate from Hagee

Monday, June 2, 2008

File this one as miscellaneous fulminations. A couple of things caught my eye this morning as I used up some of my employer’s valuable time cruising the blogs. First, if you thought that the subprime meltdown taught the big banks anything, disabuse yourself. Atrios relates that Merrill Lynch is using an accounting trick to artificially […]

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Stealing from the poor to give to the banks

Monday, May 19, 2008

Dean Baker, writing at Truthout, reports that Senator Dodd’s bill, which allegedly helps homeowners avoid foreclosure, may end up being financed by diverting money from rental assistance programs for the poor. According to Baker, Dodd’s bill does too much for the banks, and not enough for the homeowners, who may still end up losing their […]

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